


The Memory Box

by WetSammyWinchester



Series: Wincestmas 2016 [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sam's memory box, Winchester Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 07:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9224333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WetSammyWinchester/pseuds/WetSammyWinchester
Summary: Sam's memory box has been there since the beginning.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soy_em](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soy_em/gifts).



It started out as Mary’s. A simple, wooden memory box that her mom bought her in high school. She didn’t think much about it, throwing jewelry or keys in it, even hiding her cigarettes there when she went through that stage for a few months.

The box came with her when she moved in with John after her parents’ death. It sat on the top of their dresser. Every night when she went to bed, she would take off her rings and necklace and lay them inside.

It wasn’t until Dean was born that she started to put more precious things inside. A picture of John holding their little boy high above his head; a lock of Dean’s hair from his first haircut, tied off with a small blue ribbon. Each night, when she took off her rings, she would reach in and touch each item and think how lucky she was, how she had escaped the hunter life.

When Sam was born, more pictures were added to the box. Her favorite was Dean holding baby Sam in his lap, and Sam looking up at his big brother, who was ready to love and protect from the moment they met. Her boys were everything to her.

After the fire - after everything - John went back in to recover what he could from the house. In his grief, he didn’t notice the old wooden box where it sat, hiding its precious treasures, and left it behind. The new owners cleaned out the house but couldn’t bear to throw away the box. In the hopes that someone would return, they stored it away.

Someone did return to the house. Two sons came back to the place where life started for them, and had to face the pain of their past to help another family. As Sam and Dean were leaving, the box was pressed into their hands. They spent hours that night, sitting on the edge of the motel bed and looking through everything. It was a time capsule of their childhood, all that care and love contained within, another glimpse of their mother, this one as unknowable as the spirit they saw at the house. After Sam went to sleep that night, Dean slipped a couple more photos of the two of them with John inside for safekeeping.

But then they were busy with hunts again - savings people, hunting things - and the box was wedged into the spare tire well, forgotten again for years, until Dean was in hell.

All Sam had was the Impala and an open door at Bobby’s house. He returned to Sioux Falls but a plan for revenge was already forming in his head. As he cleaned it out the trunk, making room for more weapons, he pulled out the wooden box and opened it. He couldn’t bear to touch the things inside and there would be nothing to add to it in the future. All his family was dead and nothing was going to change that. He left the box on Bobby’s workbench, unable to keep it and yet unable to throw it away.

Bobby found it the next morning, along with a note from Sam, saying he would call in a few days. The old hunter glanced inside and tucked it under his arm. He found a spot for it on his bookcase where it gathered dust for over a year. The night before they went after Lucifer, with nervous laughter in the air and found family gathered around, Bobby handed it back to Sam who returned it to its rightful spot in the trunk.

Another garage, another year. Dean stood next to Baby in Lisa’s two-car garage. When he was feeling alone and lost, he would come out and clean the car and cover it back up again with the tarp. Pulling out the spare tire, he saw the wooden box underneath. He didn’t take it inside, not wanting to share his old family with his new, but instead sat inside the Impala and flipped through the photos. As the year with Lisa went by and his pain didn’t ease, Dean would return to the garage more and more frequently to open the box and let the memories out. And if he cried over Sam, over his family, well, no one was there to see it.

Two more years passed and Sam - _the real Sam_ \- returned to Dean. They found the Bunker and began to carve a home out of it. The memory box along with a few duffle bags and weapons were the only possessions the Winchesters had to move into the space.

Sam had taken over as the caretaker for the Winchester memories, and without a word, he placed the box on a library shelf. The two of them would occasionally add another piece, tucking notes and photos in with the other pieces. When Dean put the fake amulet inside, Sam almost broke down and told him how the real one was sitting right in his pocket, the metal getting warm between his fingers, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet, not now. The right time would come.

When Sam came back to the Bunker library after the Styne attack, and saw the books piled high for burning, the first thing he looked for was the memory box. It had been tossed aside, but not broken, unimportant in the scheme of what happened that night, looking like bits of nothing to a group of killers. He gathered the pieces back together - all the bits of their life that were hanging by a string, so easily destroyed by a few careless choices - and placed it back on the shelf.

Now, as he folded the retirement brochure and put it inside, Sam wondered. Was it possible that the two of them could have a life together beyond hunting? Looking at Jesse and Caesar, it seemed like they might make it to some kind of a finish line together. He closed the lid once more and walked off to find Dean in the kitchen.


End file.
